


Shiner

by Defnotmeyo



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 12:52:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11692023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defnotmeyo/pseuds/Defnotmeyo
Summary: How did a writer from California, filming a show in Vancouver, with a lead actor from Illinois and the UK, and another lead actor from New York, decide to make Shiner the trademark beer of a hallmark partnership?





	Shiner

They weren’t even five miles out of Chaney, population zero, before Mulder pulled back off the 20 and headed left under the overpass. 

Scully didn’t have to ask the question. Her eyebrow told him enough. 

“Scully, our flight isn’t until tomorrow, I’m fucking starving, and that sign said hotel AND barbecue. And if I’m going to leave Texas with something positive from this hellstate, my best bet is barbecue.”

“Mulder. It’s 11 am. What are we going to do for 18 hours in the town of… Eastland? Eastland, Texas?”

“Eat barbecue and sleep? I don’t know about you but my testicles still haven’t dropped from the thought of being sued for 446 million dollars. I could use a day of doing nothing.”

This was her favorite Mulder, most of the time. He didn’t sensor himself with her. He never had. And so she rewarded him with a tired huff of a laugh and a roll of her eyes. 

“I’m only moderately upset I will never make the acquaintance of Large Marge. She sounds like she might’ve been fun.”

He snorted as he turned left into the parking lot for Circle M Bar-B-Que, and Scully thought… well really she thought, what is the point of putting the hyphens in, when it makes the abbreviation longer than the word? 

Mulder opened the driver’s door and Scully was quickly reminded why Texas sucked. Freezing one minute and engulfed with the fiery heat of hell the next. Fucking Dallas-Fort Worth. She would swear for the rest of her life nothing good ever happened there.  
“Water or sweet tea?” Their waitress had seen better days, but her voice was somehow instantly comforting, with her soft Texas lilt. It wasn’t the harsh abrasive accent of the south. Texas was an accent all it’s own.

“Wa-”

“Swee-”

They eyed each other and nodded. Partners til the end.

“Beer,” in synchronicity… the Jungian definition.

The waitress cackled. "Don’t get many people in here lookin’ for a wet down at 11 am on a Tuesday, but I’d be happy to pour you folks up a time or two. Wutcha thinkin?“

She had an easy affability and Mulder quickly warmed… as usual. "Whutcha got?”

She was in her forties, at least, and had blond-grey seeping into her roots. “Honey, you’re in Eastland. We got Coors, Bud, and Shiner.”

“Shiner?” Scully sat back. Willing to drink beer this early, and intrigued. It had been a long few months… years… of life… shit.

The waitress, Debbie it turned out (and how fucking ironic, near a city named Dallas), practically gasped in affront. "Oooh darlin’. Shiner’s the best beer we got goin’. It’s not like that yuppie craft shit that’s starting to show up. It’s just a good Spoetzl. Tastes better than Bud with a little more punch. We brew it local right down south, in Shiner, Texas.”

“We’ll get a pitcher,” Scully offered.

His partner’s mood was so uncharacteristically good, after San Diego, Mulder dared not argue.

Two pitchers, and what felt like half of a delicious, sugary, spicy, covered cow between them, they grabbed the check. Mulder picked it up because, well… Because, okay?

“Y'all aren’t driving far, are ya?” Debbie asked as Mulder left her a hefty tip.

“We’re not driving at all, as long as you don’t mind us keeping the car in the lot. Our motel is right across the street?”

Debbie lifted one eyebrow in a perfect imitation of his partner, and Mulder decided Debbie wasn’t too rough on the eyes, for a woman ten years his senior. “The George Bush Motor Lodge Inn?”

“Uh… yeah.”

“You’ve reserved, right?”

“N… no?”

“Oh honey. You need to get over there to see if they even have a room! There’s a 5A All-State Girls’ Volleyball Tournament in town and you might be shit outta luck!” Her Texas drawl softened the blow.

Thankfully, the George Bush Motor Lodge Inn had one room, and Debbie said keeping the car in the lot would be fine. Two pitchers in and the lightweights were positively swirling.

Two queen beds. They’d done this before.

Before before before. Before cancer and hospital kisses and dead little girls.

They stopped at the gas station on the way over, and picked up another twelve pack of Shiner Bock. From Shiner, Texas, apparently. They had all day to drink it.

Mulder popped two beers and they lolled on their beds, languid and blurry. It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and they. were. drunk. T-minus how many hours til the airport?

“So uh… Sheriff Hartwell,” he begins his consensual interview, “He uh… that’s your type, huh?”

She sips from the yellow ram-labeled bottle. "My type?“

"Just, I didn’t think…” Mulder’s ego had been bruised for days now. Hartwell was a dipshit. He thought she had higher standards. He’s not willing to analyze that he thought he, himself, was the higher standard. "I didn’t think you’d go for all that Southern  
charm fake gentleman bullshit, Scully.“ Ooooooh boy. He is druuuuunk.

She sniffs out and laughs. Flicks the cap of the beer bottle his way. "I don’t go for the fake gentleman bullshit, Mulder. Hartwell was nothing if not sincere. He didn’t even nibble my neck.”

“Mmm. I’d say we’re both in trouble, when that’s become our standard.” He sses her smile out of the corner of his eye. He trudges forward, “But the uh… the…” He stops himself, waving his bottle in the air on the bed across from her. ‘The weirdo-tattooing-fake-badass bullshit, you do go for, eh Scully?’ He’s not drunk enough for that.

Now is not the time for that argument. Never. Really. Will there be a time to bring up Ed Jerse.

She hears where he is going but can, and does, appreciate his pause.

The air conditioner in the hotel room was raucously loud. First hotel beers, consumed, Mulder turned on ESPN for background noise. Denver had just slaughtered the Falcons a week previous.

“I’m surprised that you can even watch ESPN, with how shitty the Skins are.”

“Scully.” Mulder sat up on the bed and uncapped two more beers. "I’m a Jets fan.“

She wished she had the cap from the beer he just opened for her. She wants to flick one more at him. "Shut the hell up Mulder. Two years ago you wanted to take me to Skins-Vikings.”

He grimaces in disgust. "Not for the fucking Skins, Scully. Carter. Moon. We’ll be pining over those tickets in twenty years. Not every day you get to see Hall of Famers play.“

"Twenty years, huh?

Somehow, she ended up on his bed, his arm lazily stretched under the pillow she is laying against, and watching SportsCenter. Scully mulled over the detail that Mulder would be a Jets fan. A team that was routinely the underdog, had, in fact, gone 1-16 just  
two years earlier, only to bounce back to 12-4. Eternal underdogs since Broadway Joe left. ‘96 had been a rough year for both Mulder and the Jets. 

They’re six deep in their twelve-pack, and he smelled so fucking good in his white shirt and dress pants. What was that? Aftershave? Deodorant? One could only guess. Eau de Mulder. 

"Dammit, Mulder!” She giggled. He wanted to be buried with that sound. “I haven’t been day drunk since my twelve hour semester, senior year.”

“Nah? Not even academy?” He lazily scratched his belly, his white shirt riding up across the low ripple of his stomach.

“it’s different, for women. I couldn’t just drunkenly carouse and be taken seriously.”

“Mmm, who says carouse, these days?” He turned his head into her shove against his ribs and suddenly they were two beers later. 

His scruff was close enough to snag her hair. Partners. Partners. Partners. "So… Really. Hartwell?“

"Let it go.”

He tucked his arm under his head, hand along jaw and looking down on her. "I just… Scully, I’ve always thought-“

She was up and off his bed in an instant, taking an unsteady step before unceremoniously plopping back down in her own territory.

He sighed and leaned back, unwilling to complete the sentence. 

She was unwilling to try and finish it. The hangover was going to be hell.

In his mind he would speculate that timing was just never going to line up for them. 

In her mind, she speculated the time had long passed, and their moment lay among the ruins of wine and cheese in a Florida motel.

Day drunk and SportsCenter in Chaney with that elusive little something more nesting between the two queen size beds of their hotel room. 

They left two Shiners undrank. 

Years later, Mulder will be preparing for a date. It’s not a DATE date. They’ve slept together; oh have they slept together. Hell, he’s even taken her out, Hollywood-style with the tux and the little black dress. But it occurs to him they have rarely just sat at  
home, on the couch, sharing a movie and beers, living that normal life she likes to talk about. 

While she’s on her way he rents the movie, grabs the beers. At the corner store he will ask, “Hey bud, you guys got Shiner?” It’s a shot in the dark. No way a beer from a little Texas brewery has made it’s way kicking and screaming to the beltway. 

“Yeah, man, back in the fridge.”

Mulder will smile, feeling like it’s a metaphor for their relationship, consummated through so much resistance, hurdling over every obstacle thrown it’s way. Turns out, Sheriff Hartwell wasn’t her type at all.  
“Caddyshack, Mulder?’


End file.
